These Kidnappers Hit the Mother Lode

Crisis Gillian Anderson is a wealthy executive whose child has been kidnapped in this new series on Sundays on NBC.CreditChuck Hodes/NBC

Kidnappings are risky, and not just for the victims.

Network dramas about characters held captive often peter out after a promising start, weighed down by the challenge of holding viewers’ interest in one crime for an entire season. “Crisis,” a new NBC series on Sunday, pivots on the snatching of a school bus carrying the president’s son and his classmates. The pilot is terrific, and it was directed by Phillip Noyce, whose credits include the Harrison Ford movie “Clear and Present Danger” and the pilot of ABC’s “Revenge.”

This action thriller also has the kind of elements — the White House, the C.I.A., the F.B.I., billionaire C.E.O.s, diplomats and, of course, teenage angst — that could make it a new “24.” But a series centered on a busload of kidnapped students and their fate, dragged out week after week, could easily try viewers’ patience.

“Hostages,” a CBS series that was just canceled after one lackluster season, is a cautionary tale. It got off to a thrilling start with the family of a surgeon being taken hostage, apparently by criminals, who order her to kill her patient, the president. But once the surgeon wriggled out of that predicament, the story lost its dramatic tension and fizzled, a victim of preposterous characters with ludicrous motives. (There is quite enough of that on “Scandal,” on ABC.)

One reason “24” lasted for eight seasons — and is returning to Fox in May — is that hostages were a sideline in a larger swirl of conspiracies that only Jack Bauer, the counterterrorism agent, could thwart. The first season began with the kidnapping of Bauer’s wife and daughter, but he had bigger headaches than that, including an assassination plot against the president. (The show also had a clever ticking clock countdown gimmick and outstanding special effects.)

“Crisis” also has many twists, lots of high-tech mayhem and determined law enforcement figures at its center. Marcus Finley (Lance Gross), a Secret Service agent who was wounded during the attack on the school bus, is assigned to work alongside an F.B.I. agent, Susie Dunn (Rachael Taylor), whose niece Amber (Halston Sage) is one of the kidnapped students.

Amber alone could be worth a huge ransom. Her mother, Susie’s sister, is Meg Fitch (Gillian Anderson), the cool, elegant chief executive of a multinational corporation with lucrative government contracts. Meg doesn’t just lean in, she looms. Her mantra, which Amber obediently recites before school, is “Be Careful. Be Smart. Be Curious.” When Amber complains that it’s childish, her mother tells her, “I make my executives say it.”

Amber is a likely kidnapping target, but so are her classmates, almost all of whom have powerful parents, including Kyle (Adam Scott Miller), the president’s son. Kyle’s capture turns the crime into a national crisis, but the kidnappers are also intent on squeezing other parents. That scares the less wealthy classmates, who know that their families cannot buy their freedom.

Beth Ann (Stevie Lynn Jones), who is called “Food Stamps” by one of the rich jocks in the group, wants to try to escape. And she has more than one reason: Her dorky father, Francis (Dermot Mulroney), a former C.I.A. analyst, volunteered to help chaperone the field trip, and is also captured in the ambush.

The pilot makes clear that money alone isn’t the driving motive behind the crime, and that high-level conspiracies within the government play a role.

Motive, however, is almost always the weakest point of a TV thriller. The trick for “Crisis” is to keep the action moving so fast that viewers don’t get bogged down in the logic — or lack of it.

Crisis

NBC, Sunday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Produced by 20th Century Fox Television. Created by Rand Ravich; Mr. Ravich, Far Shariat and Phillip Noyce, executive producers.